At least 63 people detained during the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid at an Omaha food processing facility were being held at the Lincoln County jail in North Platte as of Friday evening.
Those detained worked at Glenn Valley Foods in Omaha and after an ICE operation, at least 74 were apprehended and taken to a temporary processing facility in Omaha.
Annie Wurth, the associate legal director at the Center for Immigrant and Refugee Advancement (CIRA) is working to provide legal counsel to those detained.
“We are all very busy, but we’re all extremely grateful to the community for their support, but also to our coworkers for all of the ways that they have stepped up and supported us through this plan that we had in place and hoped would never come to fruition,” she said.
Wurth said she was attempting to confirm whether the county jail holds 63 or 64 of the individuals detained by ICE. The rest, although Wurth said it hasn’t been confirmed, are likely to have either already been deported or are being held in a federal facility. Her team has spoken with a “good chunk” of those being held, but they weren’t able to access any of them until Friday morning.
CIRA is ensuring they all have basic access to food, water and other necessities such as medications and clothing.
The people detained in the ICE raid, said Wurth, still have the right to due process, whether they are U.S. citizens or not. Which means they have the right to access legal counsel. She argued that right had not been provided to the people detained for at least 48 hours. Although Wurth clarified that right is not always guaranteed with immigration enforcement.
The CIRA team and other attorneys on a pro bono basis are working toward being able to provide legal representation in front of a judge, another right granted under due process. This is also a situation, Wurth said, in which someone can have the chance to prove their U.S. citizenship or another protected status.
“We have been talking to detained individuals, and I think what’s important to understand is that they’re coming off of 72 hours of detention, and many of them have not been able to talk to family,” Wurth said. “I think probably their biggest concern is, what’s their future in the United States? What’s their future with their family? Where do they go from here? And some of them are even too scared to sit down with us and talk about it.”
As far as their future in the U.S., Wurth said it can vary depending on the person, but overall there aren’t enough pathways to citizenship the way immigration law is currently written.
“There [aren’t] enough individuals who have legal relief available to them, have pathways available to them, and that speaks to our broken immigration system,” she said.
CIRA, along with Nebraska Appleseed, is working with the Prairielands Freedom Fund based in Iowa to provide bond relief for any detained individuals who qualify for bond.
CIRA is also developing its social work team to more directly serve the families impacted by the raid along with Heartland Workers Center. Each organization has been working to publish and share ‘Know Your Rights’ information for the public following the ICE raid.